Many members of Bristol MAG have expressed concern about drivers using mobile phones while driving. This is seen as a threat to other road users’ safety and especially to more vulnerable road users such as powered two wheeler riders, cyclists and pedestrians.
There is clear evidence that drivers who use a mobile phone while driving, whether it is a hands-free or a hands-on phone, are at a greatly increased risk of being involved in accidents.
On June 29th 2006 the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society warned that “Drivers Using Cell Phones Are as Impaired as Drunk Drivers.” They made this statement as they published a paper by psychologists at the University of Utah.
David L. Strayer, Frank A. Drews, and Dennis J. Crouch, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah carried out research using “a high-fidelity driving simulator to compare the performance of cell phone drivers with drivers who were intoxicated from ethanol.” Their results showed that when they were using a mobile phone drivers' “braking reactions were delayed and they were involved in more traffic accidents than when they were not conversing on a [mobile] phone..” They concluded that “the impairments associated with using a cell phone while driving can be as profound as those associated with driving while drunk.” You can read the whole of their research here. Quoting from other research as well as their own they point out that “It is now well established that cell phone use impairs the driving performance of younger adults,” and “drivers are more likely to miss critical traffic signals (traffic lights, a vehicle braking in front of the driver, etc.), slower to respond to the signals that they do detect, and more likely to be involved in rear-end collisions when they are conversing on a cell phone.” Perhaps most frighteningly for those of us who have suffered SMIDSY incidents, these researchers say that “even when participants direct their gaze at objects in the driving environment, they often fail to “see” them when they are talking on a cell phone because attention has been directed away from the external environment.”
What is significant for us here in the UK is that the research shows that the impairment to driving happens whether the driver is using a hands-free or a hands-on phone.
The Department of Transport takes this danger seriously. In a Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents report Driving for work: Mobile phones supported by the department it is stated that many people are killed and injured every week in accidents involving people driving as part of their work. It also makes it clear that health and safety law applies to people driving for work and that employers have a responsibility to manage the risks involved. The report says that “research indicates that [people using mobile phones] are also four times more likely to crash, injuring or killing themselves and/or other people.” and cites a “substantial body of research [that] shows that using a hand-held or hands-free mobile phone while driving is a significant distraction, and substantially increases the risk of the driver crashing.” The report focuses on the way that using a mobile distracts a driver from giving proper attention to the task of driving.
As long ago as 2001 The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents published a report The Risk of Using a Mobile Phone While Driving that stresses the importance of the mental (cognitive) distraction that mobile phones present: “The demands of the phone conversation must compete with the demands of driving the vehicle safely.” That applied, says the report, whether it is a hands-free or hand-held phone. Using a mobile phone increased drivers' workload, said the report and significantly impaired driver performance with regard to road positioning, speed awareness, judgement, reaction times and general awareness of other traffic. The Society called for legislation to stop the use of mobiles when driving, what we got was a ban on using hand-held phones but not on use of all phones despite their proven deleterious effect on driving performance.
It is clear that using mobile phones of any kind increases the likelihood of drivers being involved in collisions and, from our point of view as bikers, raises the likelihood of a SMIDSY type of incident.
The police have power to prosecute people who use mobile phones while driving. Chris Allen writing in The Bristol Evening Post in April 2006 reported that in 2005 the Avon and Somerset Constabulary caught nearly 2500 people for using mobile phones while driving, an increase over 2004 of 50 per cent. Unfortunately the police's own website does not have anything that I could find about their activities against mobile phone use. However on their site the police say that between December 2003 and August 2006 9 collisions in their area involved the use of mobile phones, though they point out that unless there is an injury caused they are not required to record a collision. When Bristol MAG contacted the police within the last year about the problem we were told that the police do not have the resources to commit to a prevention campaign such as we would like and could do nothing to help us with a campaign.
In 2003 the Wiltshire Constabulary said they “ha[d] no stats available for mobile phone related crashes, but there have been fatalities in the UK where drivers have either been killed or killed others while using their mobile phone.”
There have been several high-profile incidents involving drivers using mobile phones and being involved in serious accidents. The Bristol Evening Post reported that in 1996 11 year old Rebekka Hudd was killed in Pucklechurch by a car driven by a man who was using a mobile phone at the time. In 2004 a man was jailed for three years for causing death by dangerous driving because he was using his mobile phone. More recently a lorry driver was sentenced to four years in prison because he caused a woman's death when he was distracted from driving by using his mobile phone.
They Work for You report that Grant Shapps, MP for Welwyn Hatfield asked the DoT Minister Stephen Ladyman “how many (a) deaths, (b) serious incidents and (c) other accidents have been caused by persons driving while using hand-held mobile telephones since 1 December 2003?” Ladyman replied in detail (you can see the breakdown on the website) that there had been 13 fatalities, 52 serious accidents and 364 slight accidents thus attributed. These included one death in the Avon and Somerset region and six “slight” accidents.
Bristol MAG members have decided to mount a campaign to raise drivers' awareness of the dangers of using mobile phones of any kind while driving and to encourage them to switch off their phones before driving.
We have published a flyer to be distributed to drivers briefly pointing out the danger and requesting them to switch off.
We will approach mobile phone companies to ask them to encourage people not to use their phones while driving
We encourage people who see drivers of commercial vehicles using a phone while driving, to report the abuse to the owners of the vehicle.
If you would like copies of the flyer to distribute either personally to people or simply leaving it on parked cars, you can download it here to print out as many copies as you like and distribute them. My favourite way is to leaflet cars in car parks.
We do encourage you to report drivers of commercial vehicles whom you see using a mobile while driving and here is a postcard size form you can download, print out and use. You can print them on ordinary paper and slip them into an envelope to send to the Transport Manager of the vehicle owner’s company, or you can print them on card and write the address on the back.